


name it ever after

by starvels (dinosaur)



Series: Cap-IM Bingo [1]
Category: Marvel 3490, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Gender Related, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Marriage, Misunderstandings, Other, Panic Attacks, Reed Richards uhm how do u say sucks, Relationship Negotiation, Trans Character(s), Transphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-16
Updated: 2017-06-16
Packaged: 2018-11-14 19:15:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11214507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dinosaur/pseuds/starvels
Summary: Tony makes one catty joke to a reporter about changing her name now that she’s publicly out and it’s just her fucking luck the entire multiverse decides to run with it.





	name it ever after

**Author's Note:**

> this verse is a bit of a mishmash of a lot of verses bc we don't have direction on 3490's likeness to 616, so i just put what i wanted. lmfao ~
> 
> for my cap-im bingo image square of 3490 cap/im getting married. decided to play on the nature of the verse description reed gives in the panel and how that would play out for actually trans tony who actually still was tony. because names don't = gender :) oh, and carol is a trans woman too, boop.
> 
> title inspired by the poem name your pain by lora mathis.

 

 

Name this something softer, something prettier.  
Name this feminine troubles.  
Name it over-emotional.  
Name this the way I’ve always been.

-

Name this trying everyday.  
Name this fighting back, hard.  
Name this my stubbornness keeping me alive.  
Name this healing.  
Name this still alive.  
Name this still here.  
Name this soft wounded thing helping itself back up.  
Name this not giving up.

— excerpt from _Name Your Pain_ by Lora Mathis

 

 

“Reed,” She warns, tipping her coffee mug at him, “You don’t fucking fix the verse ID, I’ll glue all your keyboard D keys down.” She pauses, “Cause you’re a D,” She taps right where she knows the mic will pick it up, “You know, a _dick_.”

“Mhm,” Reed hums, like he’s unbothered.

“Then, I’ll steal your kids away with the promise of chocolate and actual fun.”

Reed mumbles something.

Tony’s tempted to activate a static charge just to give him a good jump – there’s a vent right above his head – but that would be childish. Clint would do it, which really serves as a good barometric for why she _shouldn’t_. Her thumb hovers over the button, anyway. Not _all_ of Clint’s ideas end in “Aww, no.” Surely.

Still, this is the fourth time they’ve had this conversation.

“Reed,” She says again.

“Yes?”

“Fix. It. Right. Now.” She’s not gonna beg, she’s not gonna ask _please_ like she’s not owed the dignity of her own goddamn name to be on the data for their universe for the entire multiverse to read. Tony hangs up with an utterly unnecessary jab to the screen.

The workshop is too quiet, in the vacuum.

She starts up a print of some of the new knuckle joints she’s been working on. Her hands are woman’s hands. Because she’s a woman. Because there’s no right way to be a woman. Because she’s a woman with her hands and her dick and her name that she’s not fucking changing. The fabrication unit roars to life.

Good.

Tony bangs her way across the workshop floor and upstairs to shove a coffee pot to percolate. The machine makes sad beeping noises under her stabbing.

She turns to wash out her mug and comes face to face with Steve, perched in a counter chair, second breakfast beside his elbow and ridiculous blue eyes sharp. Around him are endless papers that must be for caterers and florists and whatever else he’s up to his ass in trying to celebrate their love. Tony swallows and takes her mug back to the coffee maker, setting it on the counter too loudly.

Steve watches her over top his tablet, eyes pinched.

It could be from excess wedding planning, but Tony bets not. Her shoulders scrunch up without permission.

“What,” She snaps.

Steve just watches.

Coffee bursts across her tongue like lava when she downs the first cup too quickly, but it’s not like Tony isn’t used to it. She goes back for more. Story of her life, yada yada.

Still, it and something about Steve’s quiet tapping at the screen, keeping an eye on her like always, makes her chill down.

“I’m not carrying flowers, so you know,” Tony says, two cups later. “What if I have to repulsor someone?”

“’Someone’ better give more than two thinks about interrupting Captain America and Iron Woman and their 120 guests of superhuman origin during their sacred marriage nuptials,” Steve says, pointed and dry.

Tony laughs and leans against the counter in front of him.

“You’d make a terrifying wedding planner, love.” She’d pay substantially to see it, too.

“Thank you, dear,” Steve says and pushes out the chair beside him so Tony can sit in it and list into Steve’s side.

Tony really has made the excellent executive choice of marrying someone who doubles as a high-quality pillow.

When the Avengers alert goes off spectacularly not 10 minutes later, Tony yawns and shuffles her way to the closest suit rig as Steve sets down the tablet and launches himself across the mansion.

“Villains should go to Better Timing Seminars,” Tony says first thing, on the comms.

“So should you,” Steve snipes and then starts calling out emergency personal locations around the today’s two-but nasty.

Tony smiles behind the helmet and dives into the battle.

It’s ugly, tasking work. She loves it.

“Though,” Peter says to Ororo as the three of them are on the way back to the mansion for a cool down before their clean up shift, “That lightning couple at the end by you and blonde and godly might have been much.” It launched gooey fibrous entrails 12 city blocks.

“No,” Ororo grins, “It wasn’t.”

Tony high fives her and then begs human Jarvis for blueberry waffles.

80 minutes after Tony’s finally finished with her last rotation of city clean up duty for the two bit explodazoid and only a mere 38 hours after their conversation, Reed sends a message.

_What am I doing again?_

Tony could throttle him.

Suit still half on, she digs viciously into an old telescope with a phillips that’s way too big.

The Avengers work queue is literally overflowing out of bins in the workshop, and she sent in the new markups for SI last Tuesday but then Winni sent them back and that means there’s something wrong, either in the finance – finance. Goddamnit. She levees a lens too hard. She fucking thought she cleared the safety protocol updates for the reactor installation teams but Jessminda sent an email an hour ago and obviously Tony fucking didn’t so she needs to fix that as well.

Pepper’s on the Shellstine merger but that’s fine, they had coffee yesterday while complaining about the state of HR. So she’ll have put Joaquim on that already and Tony just has to worry about saving the world, one rocket at a time.

“Tell Reed to do what I told him to do on our call, the day before yesterday,” She tells JARVIS and then flips on _Black Ice_ for some focus.

She emerges later to Luke and Peter having an argument about _Say Yes To The Dress_ in the common room.

“Ugh,” Tony shares a commiserating look with Jessica, who’s chopping an apple with an unseemly big knife.

“Yours was the worst, ‘fore he left to punch his dress frustration out.” Jess says, around an apple slice.

“God, isn’t he though?” Tony shudders and goes to find protein.

Logan John-Waynes in sometime around when Peter has progressed into shouting, “Mary Jane and I will have matching beautiful gowns and you will live in _envy_ , Luke.”

He pauses in the doorway and Tony toasts him with a chicken leg.

Logan turns around and walks out.

It’s nice to have everyone home, really.

Course that lasts just up through Ororo and Thor returning and the whole team of buzzards descending on the kitchen in search of grub, before Jarvis, the human, takes one look at them and neatly swishes them into orders for Thai. One day, Tony’s gonna figure out he’s honest to god magical and about to succeed Stephen Strange for Sorcerer Supreme.

“Thanks Jarv,” Tony mumbles around some stolen tofu. Steve takes some of her shrimp in between talking to Peter about a new training course.

“Yes,” Thor says, “What Natasha said.”

The tofu turns into rubber cement in Tony’s mouth.

She freezes with it in her mouth, struggling to chew, to swallow. It chokes down unhappily.

Dinner doesn’t stop, continues in mumbles and curry slurps around her and and –

“I have to go,” She manages, seconds or minutes or millennia later; drops her spoon and pushes the plate at Steve. “Emergency. Office.”

The panic attack makes land just as Tony closes the gym door. It’s wrenching, in her stomach and chest. She sits there, zoning, feeling disconnected from the sharp pain, the struggle of her breaths. There’s tears, probably.

She’s so tired.

It stretches on, traps her. Beings to abate just when she think she may scream from the hold of it.

When she feels her fingers again, JARVIS speaks quietly just from the speaker closest to her. “It’s March 5th. You are in the Avengers Mansion. Your heart rate is 82 bpm and your blood pressure is within normal ranges. All security measures are running routinely and uncompromised. The –“

“It’s okay, J. It’s good,” Her breath skips. “It’ll be fine.”

JARVIS is quiet for a moment. “As you wish.”

Tony loves this brilliant, cultural sponge of an AI so much. Her child. The one being that doesn’t push when she says no.

“You’re my favorite,” Tony tells it, levering her sore muscles off the floor.

“I’m your only AI,” JARVIS says, with a slight mechanical sniff.

Tony laughs drily and pushes back into the hallway. “Talk to me about your east wing additions, baby. What specs you want for your new arm?”

“Well,” JARVIS says and then off it goes.

Tony winds her way to the library to play with the blueprints, smiling.

Two hours later, she and JARVIS have got four new rooms, a backorder for some carbon plating they used up in the last additions and an addition to the next Avengers meeting agenda to talk about pantry space allocation.

The next day, after Tony’s spent a quiet night curled with Steve, Reed calls. She dawdles a bit saving all her open blueprints and then answering on the last ring.

Reed’s surrounded by yellow smoke in his lab and Tony takes a moment to wonder if it’s dangerous and has a flash of vindictive hoping so.

“Did you do it?”

“Well,” Reed says, as he messes with a GCMS on the table. Though for what he needs the analyze molecules for Tony hasn’t a fucking clue because the gas is _visible_. She bites on her tongue. “Yes, but the propagation through the multiverse is complex. These things take time to filter, you know.”

Tony breathes out, cautious. “You changed my name? In –” She gestures vaguely to indicate everywhere and the nowhere in between everywhere where Reed’s multiverse tech lives and codes.

“Yes,” Reed bites out, “Your push has gotten you to Rogers faster than anyone ever has. Congratulations.”

What.

“What?”

“Natasha Rogers is in Earth-3490’s ID before you even are Rogers,” Reed says, in that snooty way that’s supposed to make you in awe of his haphazard genius.

“You put me in as Natasha Rogers?” Tony’s ears are roaring.

“Yes,” Reed raises his awful eyebrows. “Maybe I’ll put in a protocol and name it Married Women.”

Fucking amazing, this awful string bean of a man. He did even more the opposite of what she asked, than she could have imagined.

“No criticism,” Tony grits out, “To your wife, who is far lovelier than you deserve, but I’m not fucking changing my name, for Steve or anyone else. And that is not. My. Name.”

Reed’s face flashes with annoyance before he snaps, “Well I don’t know what you want me to do about it. The Shi’ar ambassador has already started switching your terms of address, and so has –“

“What. The. Fuck.”

The entire universe. The entire multiverse. It’s already started to spread everywhere.

God, if _The_ _Bugle_ knew their own fucking trash reporting power.

“Change it back, Reed, I’m warning you,” Tony’s heartrate is too fast. The holo-display in front of her has shifted to make room for the auto-engaged heartrate tracker in the corner. She ignores it.

“You want me to change it? Again?” Reeds voice gets louder. “To _what_?”

“Why don’t you use your ginormous stretched out brain, and _guess_ , you slimy sea cucumber,” Tony cuts back and shuts off the call, sinking down.

The table is hard and cold against her face. She’s so tired of this. It’s so simple. It’s so fucking simple.

But they always have to make it into something. They all think she has to change her name to be just who she is.  

It makes her wanna throw up.

She kicks at the underside of the table. “What the fuck is wrong with them?” She says, just to JARVIS.

The panic crawls along her spine, but its molasses slow, like resignation set on a flame too low to boil.  

“I could call Dr. Richards and explain transphobia to him,” JARVIS suggests, syllables hard and controlled.

Tony curls into the table more. “No. No, don’t.”

Practicing breathing is a good use of her time. And her therapist always says positive thinking isn’t the horseshit Tony says it is, so.

She’s 32 and she’s getting married to a man that loves her.

Everything is fine.

Everything is absolutely, positively fine.

She emerges from the lab a day later and tracks her own coffee trails back to the kitchen. She curls her scarred and nail-chipped fingers around her favorite coffee stained kitty cat cup and everything is fine.

Clint walks in as she’s on her third cup.

“Hey Natasha,” he says, pulling a coffee mug out of the cabinet.

It cuts like surgical steel.

Tony takes the coffee carafe beside her and holds eye contact with Clint as she upends it over the sink.

He sputters.

“Hey, asshole,” she sing-songs and takes her fresh coffee mug back with her down to the workshop.

A couple of angry-assignment filled hours later, Steve knocks on the table in front of her.

Tony glances up at his tight-shirted beauty, and breathes deep for a moment, pulling her control together, “If this is about your grav boots I’m not done with them yet. I need more time to analyze what heel will best enhance your ass.”

Steve chuckles, says “Sure Tony,” all fond, then, “ _Grav boots_. Ain’t it weird how we live in the future.”

“No,” Tony says, “It’s weird how in the future we _don’t_ live.” She wrenches at a stubborn bolt.

“Mm,” Steve demurs. It’s not an argument they have outside of therapy sessions.

Tony sticks her tongue out at him. He grins back and taps her wrist.

“5 o’clock,” he says cheerfully.

“Ugh,” she says, but leaves the bolt and has JARVIS clock the new fabrication, and line up DUMM-E’s updates.

“The calculations for Dr. Uytengsu, sir?”

“Mm,” Tony downs the last of her cold coffee and follows Steve to the door, “Send it. Nothing more precise I can do without the magnificent Meg’s trial data anyway.”

Steve’s giving her a look.

“New prosthesis line. Need the alpha user trial feedback before I can tune the more complex wiggly bits,” She wiggles her fingers at him.

“No,” Steve says, still staring at her, “I mean, that’s great Tony. You’re doing really good work.” He squeezes her hip and she waves him off. “But,” he catches her eyes, serious, “I mean. Did you. Do you want JARVIS calling you _sir_?”

Tony pauses, one hand still outstretched.

“What?”

Steve clears his throat, “JARVIS called you sir, just now. Is that – do you prefer that address?”

“From you?”

Steve just raises an eyebrow.

She winks back, overly raunchy and he just flicks lightly at her side.

“You know I don’t care what I call you when I’m subbing,” Steve says, just the barest hint of blush. Super pinchable. “But I’d like to know just for other settings.”

Tony sighs out and leads the way into the elevator.

“It’s what J’s always called me. I don’t care what it does, because I know what it means,” JARVIS, her child, her safe haven of encyclopedic and genderless empathetic scripted understanding, “It’s more complex with other people.”

“Because you can’t tell what they mean by it.”

Tony tilts her head and then leans back against the wall.

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” Steve nods, jawline pointed. “But if anyone calls you something, I call you something you can’t tell the intent, or you don’t like…”

_Tell him._

“Yeah,” Tony says again.

Steve doesn’t say anything about the team and Tony knows then it’s because he doesn’t know. It’s something of a relief. She doesn’t want to deal with it. 

Steve is always cataloging those things. The Gender Things. How to approach, how to refer, how to support but not take over. She used to find it cold. Worried about it being lingering sticky-tacky distaste because Tony was legally male when they began this. Years ago, when they were new and it was the nation’s greatest super soldier analyzing her like another battle field mud sketch. But, it’s not that, for them.

Steve is her partner in the field. Adjustments he makes to battlements, to deployments and resource aggregation is only ever for her, is on level ground with her, back to back against the world.

It’s comforting, to have his tactical mind at her shoulder, ready to take on the world with her.

She could lay all these facts out in front of him, and he would help.

But that’s just the problem.

He would _help_.

So, she says nothing. Steve pulls her to a meeting on table centerpieces and she withers in her chair complaining about the smell of lavender and says nothing.

Reed doesn’t message her again.

Five days, 2 near-miss panic attacks, 12 protein shakes and a killer sea slug they dump into Namor’s lap later and Tony is stewing in the mansion workshop when Carol glides in. She’s all hard muscle and primary colored costume. Her hair is chopped even shorter, maybe forced by an errant blast, and it looks good, sleek.

“Didn’t know you were back,” Tony says.

“Space ended early,” Carol winks.

“See, that’s cute, because the universe is mathematically infinite but finite in age.”

“Yes, Doctor Snarky,” Carol says, swinging onto the counter next to Tony’s seat.

“Yes, Captain Spaceface,” Tony says. She breathes in the fresh ozone and sharp afterburn rain, of Carol with familiarity. It’s good to have her home, too.

Tony works for a bit before Carol nudges her side.

“What’re you doing?”

“House expansions. Dunno if you noticed, but we’re a bit crowded for space.”

“Stop adopting every sad case that comes your way?” Carol suggests, grinning.

“No,” Tony sticks her tongue out.

A foot swipes at her leg.

“It’s going good, so far?” Carol asks. She’s watching Tony closely.

“Yeah. It’s nice,” Tony says, nonchalant, to JARVIS’ east-wing blueprints on the table in front of her, “Nice to facilitate someone else choosing their own form, you know. Making their own decisions, from the bones up.”

Air from the vent above Tony goes warm for a second. An AI hug.

The room quiets, just the slight smooth tone of Tony’s writing across the holograms and U cleaning the counter.

“Heard there was some shitty press going around about someone changing their name?”

Shock spikes across Tony’s shoulders and she pulls her hands away from the holos. Captain Marvel reporting, always fucking in the know.

“Oh. It. I –” Tony tries before her voice cracks out on her.

Carol’s hand comes down gently on her shoulder.

Tony’s eyes close just for a second.

“I’m on your side, Tony.” Tony’s chest cinches at the emphasized use, and Carol continues gently, “Do you want me to handle it with the team?”

Tony doesn’t have to ask how she knows that Tony wouldn’t have said anything, couldn’t. 

Carol isn’t the same as Steve. Carol sees that future line. Carol didn’t choose her serum, the trauma drip-dropped into it smearing itself over her body and gender. Carol goes to AA meetings with Tony and does charity and housing projects and sponsorships for women like them, women who’ve had to come out about being a woman and ask for it to be validated.

“Reed won’t,” Tony starts, like it’s pulled out of her by the nails. “He won’t. Change the verse-ID. Either.”

“Okay,” Carol says, and rests her head on top of Tony’s.

They stay like that for a while. JARVIS talks softly and Carol makes a landing pad adjustment and Tony breathes and breathes.

After a while Carol pulls away and Tony tries to pull herself together by burying herself in parallel circuits. Midday, Tony goes to lunch with Pepper where they compare notes on the new micro-reactor presentations and plot to take over the world through judicious tempura application.

“How are you doing?” Pepper asks sometime around their third round. She’s having yam rolls again today. Yuck.

“Fine. Everything’s fine.”

“Is it?” Pepper says, dry as the Riesling they aren’t having, “I’ve been keeping up with the news,” she continues, like that’s news.

“Yup.”

Pepper catches her eyes, “It’ll pass. They’ll find something else to be ignorant and excessive over. Or else.” Her eyes narrow into the distance.

Tony quirks a smile.

They eat another round.

Tony plays with her sashimi, mumbles, “It’s nice you and Rhodey have such a good flow right now. Good contracts. Nice job on the merger.”

Pepper’s hand is gentle on hers. “We miss you too, Tony. We’ll do a dinner soon.”

And Tony looks away to blink a lot.

They always get her. Bits of her heart, strings of her spine.

“Well,” she clears her throat, “If you insist, but not that burger shop from last time. Any more of that grease and I’ll have to use it to slick myself into my dress instead of fitting into it.”

Pepper snorts loudly. “I can do the math on the probability of you wearing a dress to get married too, Tony. It’s less than the chance of Namor showing up claiming his fifth favorite octopus objects to you marrying its paramour, Steve.”

Tony chews in consideration, “I’d be amenable to a polyamorous arrangement. Tentacles are all the rage.”

Pepper’s pinch to her wrist stings all the way back to the office labs, where Tony settles in with some more endless paperwork to sign.

Carol texts her just a couple hours later, just a simple:

 _Done_.

Tony looks at it hovering over the Q1 report from Jackie’s department and breathes out long. She doesn’t say anything, but later when Carol texts her again about the propulsion on SI’s latest interplanetary probes, Tony sends back the public-filed schematics and pulls her on call just to see her grin.

Tony clears out of the office by 2, leaves the signed report and a wink with Mrs. Arbogast who chuckles and manages 20 different ringing lines at once.

“Take it easy, Mrs. A, yeah?”

She hums and shoos Tony out.

Traffic is on the endurable side of horrendous and Tony makes it to the bakery – on the 43rd floor, shouldn’t there be something against that; baking in the sky – well before Steve and her appointment at 3. She leans against the wall adjacent to the elevator and waits, feeling like she’s lost 20 pounds of worry weight. It’s a good feeling, freeing. She won’t say anything to Carol probably, but. Carol’s mailbox might end up with an unreasonable amount of baked goods in it anyway.

She is at a bakery, afterall.

Steve comes in at 15 till, his shield portfolio over his shoulder and his jeans nicely tight. Meetings must’ve gone okay even though Tony hasn’t heard from him, because he looks put out but not lit up.

Tony throws up a thumb in approval. “Pull up a wall, good-looking.”

“Hey,” Steve kisses her and leans next to her.

They meander through their days a bit. Steve omitting classified mission details, Tony omitting classified patent information and the whole name thing.

5 till, and they wind to an easy silence.

When Steve clears his throat, Tony looks over cautiously and raises an eyebrow.

“Carol talked to the team today,” Steve says, neutral, arms crossed as he stares at the wall opposite them.

Ice grabs Tony’s throat. Steve was just saying he had meetings all day but he must’ve gone back to the mansion at some point. Carol must’ve made sure of it.

“Oh?” she manages.

A lull, for a second.

“I didn’t know the press did that. I didn’t know the team thought they were right,” his voice sounds as cold as Tony feels.

“You hate _The Bugle_ and co.” In some ways, Tony had been glad, because that’d meant Steve wouldn’t see it.

Something foreign but unmistakably uncomplimentary flings itself from Steve’s mouth and echoes down the hall.

Tony nearly laughs. “German?” she asks, scratching at her tense arms.

Steve ignores her and continues cussing for a moment longer before visibly forcing his voice down. He stops moving for 20 seconds. _Anger Management 201 with Dr. Ellis_ , Tony thinks.

“I hate _The Bugle_ ,” Steve sighs out and shrugs one big shoulder hard into the wall, “I didn’t see it, didn’t hear the team, but you could have –”

_Told him._

She could have.

“You’ve had meetings. Assignments to punch through, assignments to assign,” Tony shrugs too, chest feeling tight. “What would you have done?”

“I would have done it for you,” Steve says, eyes burning.

“You shouldn’t have to,” she says, thinks _I didn’t want you to. I wanted them to listen to me. But then I couldn’t do it. And Carol could._

Steve closes his eyes, presses his fingers to his nose. “I know,” he grits out, nodding.

Tony watches him for a moment. She’s had those fingers inside her, knows the heel texture of his fingerless gloves against the heat of her, remembers the press of them over gashes on her torso, over bullet holes on her legs, recognizes the imperfect ridges of Steve’s thumb nail left over from when Steve Rogers was just Steve Rogers and not the symbol and hope of a nation, is intimately familiar with just how much these hands would tear down for her, to fight with her.

She loves this man.

Tony reaches out and tugs his hand down, slots their fingers together perfectly.

Who knows what she’s supposed to say in this situation but, “I like that you’re always willing to go to bat for me, slugger.”

“Not that you need a pinch hitter, what with the left hook you got,” Steve squeezes the hand in question, the hand he taught to throw that punch.

“Like that you know that, too,” Tony says, quieter.

Steve pulls them close together. His breath sighs out against Tony’s cheek and she’s always liked that she’s almost of a size with him. She’s muscular, she’s tall, she’s built up herself to match her armor. But just for now, she tucks her head down against Steve, just for a second.

“I don’t wanna fight people for my gender,” Tony whispers, into the cotton of Steve’s shoulder.

“I know, Shellhead,” Steve whispers back, arms tight around her neck, “I’m sorry.”

Tony squeezes at Steve’s familiar waist.

It’s probably a little undignified to be clinging to each other outside a bakery in midtown, but it’s hardly the worst place they’ve done it. Their track record is impressive and not-dead oh-yay! relief filled like that.

Kissing the shape of Steve’s dogtags earns her a quiet sound and fingers stroking at the nape of her neck. She relaxes into his calloused hands, tension she hadn’t noticed bleeding out.

He notices, mutters something heinous.

“It’s okay,” Tony says, and finds she actually somewhat means it.

Steve presses a grimace of a smile to her temple.

Tony clears her throat. Time to redirect. “Now, are we doing this thing or not?”

“I bloody well hope you are,” Mariana of the fancy bakery says, leaning out the now open door beside them and flipping her hair. Some battle-ready, hyper-aware heroes they are. They both have to tense to not jump. “After the _12 hours_ ,” Mariana continues, “I’ve spent with Steve talking about frosting alone.”

Steve flushes a bit but maintains, “Fondant is disgusting plastic and I’ll not have it near my wedding cake, Mari.”

She snorts. “Come on, you. I’m trying to get you married.”

“I’m _trying_ to be married already,” Tony grumbles, furrowing her brows dramatically.

“Suck it up,” Steve says, sneaky, gloating gloater of a boggle winner that he is.

“You only got yourself 5 more weeks, sonny jim,” She pokes at his shapely chest. “You better be using it wisely.” She stokes up and down a bit in appreciation, “Hopefully to buy a dress that accents that you’ve got more boob than I do and just how lovely they really are.”

Steve clenches down on his smile, “I’m wearing my uniform like you are, Tone.”

Pleasure in her spine, Tony grins, “I could make a boob window?”

“No.”

“Just for the day?”

“No.”

“Just for the press pictures?”

And that – Steve pauses for a moment. Tony feels her eyes widen with glee.

“Oooh, ye – “

“No,” Steve covers her mouth, “I’d love to make them spit with fury for running the Natasha story, I really would – “

“Get their gander up about gender. Good payback,” Tony says to Steve’s hand. It comes out mumbled and delighted.

Steve gives her a stern look that’s ruined by the matching delight crinkling his eyes, “But not on my wedding day, please?”

And it is Steve’s wedding day. The day that Steve wanted to make into a big deal and Tony _said fine, you win, you plan_ and Steve had been determined and true to his word, as always.

Tony hums. “I can pick another day?”

Steve pulls his hand away to cup Tony’s neck, pull her in, “Yes, you can pick another day.”

“Well,” Tony says, to the soft, sweet curve of Steve’s collar. “I do like to pick my own things.”

“You do,” Steve says simply, and kisses her head.

Four weeks later, when he kisses her in the armor, they have said their vows and Natasha is just the name of a ginger in a slinky dress in the crowd. Tony is front and center and married. Tony is a Stark and Steve isn’t a Stark yet, but he seems amenable and she’s a good at selling a pitch.

Tony grins at the press when they step outside the church. She knows she shows too many teeth and she knows she doesn’t care. 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! unbeta'd so lemme know if you say anything wonky and i'll nab it. as always, i'm open to discussion/critique re genderings or any other bit and as always, i hope you enjoyed it!
> 
> the tumblr post for this fic is [here](https://starvels.tumblr.com/post/161885340556/) on the ole bloggo and i'll be posting/talking more abt this fic and others on there as well :')


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